


The Bargain

by redsnake05



Category: 19th Century CE German Literature RPF, 19th Century CE RPF
Genre: Folklore, Gen, Magic, Music, Original Character(s), Romanticism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:07:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21787987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsnake05/pseuds/redsnake05
Summary: Bettina finds a secret door at her grandmother's house, one that leads to something very unexpected. The things she learns as a result change her life in small but important ways.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 21
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Bargain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [subito](https://archiveofourown.org/users/subito/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this! I was inspired by her nickname.

The tiny room was very quiet, and even the curtains slid open with a minimum of rattling on their rods. Moonlight flooded in and washed everything silver, from the grate where a fire still smouldered to an old rocking horse rendered terrifying by age and not helped by the shadows. It was an old-fashioned nursery, seemingly not much used, and occupied by just one lonely-looking crib, while the nurse slept in the little room next door. There were a few muffled thumps as a chair was heaved over to the crib against the wall and a small figure climbed up onto it. A stool followed, dragging along the rug, and another figure scrambled onto the top.

"See, Grandpapa," said Lili, leaning over the crib. "This is her, the one they call Bettina."

Grandpapa examined the sleeping child. She was a few years old maybe, with dark curls and plump cheeks. He looked up at Lili, then back at the baby as if searching for something. She was the very image of Lili, in a smaller, softer form. He nodded slowly.

"You were right," he said.

"Of course I was right!" said Lili.

"It's a remarkable resemblance," he said. "I never heard of human children looking so much like a kobold. It's a shame about her ears, of course."

"They're even a little pointy," said Lili, "for a human child. One can't have everything."

"No, I suppose not," he said. "Now that we've found her, what should we do? Steal her away?"

"No, I don't want to keep her. Human children are loud and messy and helpless, and it never works out as well as you hope. I'm too old to be a changeling, too."

"What then? Did we just come her to marvel at her?"

"I thought you might like to play for her, Grandpapa," said Lili. "A gift, say." She produced his fiddle with a snap of her fingers and held it out with a winning smile.

"It's come to something when we give a gift to any stray human child we stumble across," he grumbled, but took the fiddle from her readily and checked the tuning. Lili was not fooled. He loved any chance to play music, and gifts given to humans often paid off in unusual ways at unusual times. She produced her whistle.

"Softly," she said. "We don't want to wake the nurse."

"If she cries, it is your fault," he replied, before striking the first slow notes of an old folk tune. He looked at Lili and she nodded. It was a good tune, stolen from one of the old Meistersingers with their ridiculous formulas and pompous rules. It was appropriate to gift this child something stolen and repurposed, for she would grow up with that wildness in her spirit as a result. It was maybe a mischief, but not certainly one. As they swung into the song, Bettina's eyes opened and she stared up at them, silent with her big eyes like stars, watching them and taking it all in. 

>>>>

Bettina couldn't remember seeing the door in the wainscoting at the top of the stairs before, and it was intriguing enough that she stopped her dawdling progress and considered it. She'd been in her grandmother's house for less than a week, and her previous visits had all been as a very small child, before her mother's death. It was, at least, better than the convent school, not least because her departure from there, and arrival here, had been accompanied by her brother Clemens, quite the most marvellous and romantic figure of her young life. He'd given her Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship_ , to ease boredom in the carriage, and she had discovered a whole new world. Perhaps this secret door was part of that new world.

She looked more closely at the heavy wooden panelling. It was the light catching on a small metal latch that had drawn her eye. Even having seen that, she had to trace the close-fitted grooves of the half-height frame to be certain it wasn't just an odd piece of panelling. 

She was expected in the drawing room shortly, but she didn't think she could walk past this door now that she'd seen it. Perhaps it was one of the priest's holes she had read about in a history book, although what one was doing in her grandmother's house was difficult to imagine. Bettina tried to remember what the priest's holes were for, but only a few gruesome and unhelpful recollections of people dying in them as they were searched for came to mind, and also that they were mainly found in England. 

The distant sound of a doorbell decided her; she didn't particularly want to go to afternoon tea anyway, and if there were guests that was all the more reason to avoid it. If she said she had been practicing the piano, her grandmother would surely forgive her, as she herself had already forgotten dinner and not left her room altogether, for her writing, of course, on an evening when tiresome guests might be expected. Besides, it was a big house, and it would be reasonable for her to get lost.

Stooping down, Bettina fiddled with the latch until it clicked and the door swung open to reveal a tiny passage. She looked with misgiving at the opening for just a moment, but the sound of steps in the hallway below decided her. She bent down and stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind her. Somehow, the snick of shutting was much louder and more definite than of opening, but she could see light ahead, and the little passageway was clean and well-kept. It seemed unlikely that there would be skeletons.

For a moment, Bettina hesitated. Then she thought of the story she would have to tell Clemens, who, she was sure, would never hesitate to explore a secret passageway. She shuffled towards the light and emerged into a small sitting room, decorated with old-fashioned furniture of the sort one saw in folktales, all centred around a gleaming stove on which rumbled a kettle. Most startling of all was the old man standing with his back to Bettina, busy with a coffee pot and cups. He was dressed in dark knee breeches and a rough white shirt, but he was tiny, only about two-thirds of Bettina's size. When he glanced over his shoulder, she gasped at his pointed ears and old, wizened profile.

"So you're finally back, Lili," he said. "Took you long enough, and all you had to do was find my fiddle to oblige your old grandpapa. Not a difficult task I would have thought, but clearly taxing for you."

He turned back to the kettle, which had started to sing, taking it off the heat and pouring water into the pot. Bettina thought quickly. This was much, much better than any priest's hole, for this must be a kobold. She knew of them from all the favourite stories of her childhood, before she went to school and it was all replaced by saints and prayers; still mystical, but considerably more virtuous. She had been fascinated by their mixture of cozy domestic cleaning and wicked tricks.

"I couldn't find it, Grandpapa," she said, hastily sitting down and hoping he might continue not to notice that she wasn't Lili. It seemed unlikely, since she was so very much larger than his granddaughter must be, but she tried to make herself look small.

"What?! It was a perfectly simple request! Bungled. I should have known." He turned and shoved a cup and a biscuit into her hands without seeming to look much at her, and quickly turned back to get his own, and then to poke at something on the bench. "Did you look under the bed?" he demanded.

"Yes," she said. She looked at the biscuit dubiously. It appeared to be some sort of Springerle, printed with a threatening image of a dragon. The kobold stuffed a biscuit almost whole into his mouth, making an impressive noise that seemed to mingle appreciation for the biscuit with disbelief that she had actually looked under the bed. Since Bettina had not, in fact, looked anywhere, she felt this was fair. She bit the head off her dragon and followed it up with a cautious mouthful of hot chicory and dandelion brew, just how she liked it with plenty of honey and milk. 

"Did you look properly under the bed?" he persisted. "It's like with sweeping; you always say you've got into the corners, and then before you know it the wollmäuse are running wild and stealing the cheese."

"I have never let a wollmäuse run wild," said Bettina quite truthfully. She had never had to do the cleaning herself, and was indifferent to the domestic arts the convent school had tried to instill in her. 

The door clicked again, and a rush of footsteps heralded someone else, probably the real Lili. Bettina felt sudden dismay. She was caught, and how was she ever going to get out of this? Clearly, she hadn't thought this through enough, but she hadn't been expecting actual kobolds either.

"Here it is, Grandpapa! It wasn't under the bed at all," she called, rushing into the room clutching a small fiddle. She stopped short and Bettina looked up and met her gaze. "And who is this?" she asked. "And why is she eating my biscuit?" The last was added in an accusatory tone, and Bettina looked guiltily at the biscuit half-eaten in her hand. Stealing was quite bad, unless one could say it was for the sake of art, when it could be called inspiration.

"What, Lili?" he asked, turning and finally seeming to realise that there was someone else in the room, and that they were not, in fact, his granddaughter. He looked between the two of them, and Bettina could see why he had made the mistake. If you discounted the size difference, looking at Lili was like looking in a mirror. She hadn't realised that kobolds could look quite so much like humans. Even her ears were more rounded.

"How did you get in?" Grandpapa demanded furiously. "And what are you doing here?"

"I came in through the door," Bettina said. "The one on the landing by the back stairs. And this is my house."

"You left the door open!" shouted Grandpapa, turning to Lili, "and now look what's happened! An invasion!"

"I went out by the front way," retorted Lili. "You came home by the back stairs, so you must have left it open! And you gave her my biscuit."

"Yes, well, no need to go apportioning blame," said Grandpapa hastily. "But we'll have to do something to get rid of her."

"I am Bettina Brentano," said Bettina, deciding it was time to introduce herself and try to slide out of the unpleasant situation. Surely they would realise this was a mistake. They continued to stare at her balefully, and Bettina remembered some of the less comfortable stories about kobolds. "Thank you for the biscuit," she added politely, "but I really must be going. Grandmother has guests for afternoon tea."

"Bettina, did you say?" asked Lili, suddenly seeming much more reasonable. She thrust the fiddle at her Grandpapa and came forward. "Well, well," she said, "Grandpapa, it's the little baby! My almost changeling!"

Bettina had been called a changeling a few times, and didn't much like it, but she didn't feel like this was really the moment to protest, not when there was far less talk of getting rid of her. Grandpapa came forward and looked at her closely.

"So it is," he said. "Do you not remember us?"

Bettina was confused. She didn't want to run the risk of insulting them and being turned out just for 'something' to get rid of her later, like a loose rug to trip on. However, she wasn't sure that lying to them would help. 

"Of course she doesn't!" scoffed Lili. "She was just a little baby. All they do is babble nonsense, drool, and make a terrible mess and noise."

Bettina felt insulted. She had been an adorable child. All her nurses had said so. Even the nuns and lay sisters at the convent had been charmed by her and had indulged her.

"Well, well, you might not remember us," said Grandpapa, now with a kindly air, as if he'd never even thought of how they might dispose of her, "but we remember you! You were a sweet little thing, for a human child."

"You never would have even thought of stealing food meant for another," added Lili, looking pointedly at the half-eaten biscuit in her hand.

"Tut, nevermind, I have more biscuits," said Grandpapa. "Let's sit down and I'll even fetch you a fresh cup, Lili; perhaps that will sweeten your temper. We have a guest!"

Bettina found herself sitting cross-legged on the floor at the little kitchen table. It was not particularly comfortable, but her legs fitted underneath neatly enough and she had a fresh cup and a piece of fruit cake. The coffee set featured kobolds in various poses, the way some human sets would feature sentimental couples and hunters with languid spaniels at their feet.

"So you knew me when I was a baby?" asked Bettina.

"Yes, Lili found you in the nursery. There hadn't been a child in there for many years, for before our current occupant, we had a childless old couple, and before that a misanthropic minor noble who barely saw his servants, much less any children. Yes, it's been a good house to serve. Nice and quiet."

Bettina could see the advantages, from a kobold's point of view, though she found the idea of such small households rather depressing. She liked to have plenty of people around her, the better to capture their ideas and match them up. She liked to figure people out and put them together, like dolls having tea and sharing political opinions, which had been quite one of her favourite games. If the dolls hadn't liked it, they never said so, and she couldn't imagine that anyone would object when they realised the brilliance of the match.

"We played for you," said Lili, now considerably pacified with her own cup, a biscuit, and a much larger slice of fruit cake than the one on Bettina's plate. "Grandpapa on his perpetually misplaced fiddle, and me on the whistle. Is that you we've heard in the music room, then?"

"Music is life," said Bettina, seeing an opening to talk about one of her favourite things. "Clemens, my brother, is a poet, and he reads beautifully, but I find music moves me more than words can. One feels music in one's heart, not just with one's ears, don't you think?"

"Are you a musician, then?" asked Grandpapa. "Very nice."

"I am an artist," said Bettina.

"I daresay," said Lili. "I heard some of your little compositions yesterday."

Bettina flushed with rage. No one had heard her own compositions before, not even Clemens. They were not yet ready to be sent forth to stun the ears and uplift the souls of an audience. How dare this little creature listen in on her, and describe the results so coolly?

"Very good, I thought them, with an echo of the songs we played when you were a baby. You must have taken to them," continued Lili, not seeming to notice Bettina's fury. "Would you like to learn more?"

Bettina's anger cooled as quickly as it had flared. This had to be the answer to a prayer, though the nuns had always told her to focus her prayers on worthy things like the health of the pope and avoiding impure thoughts. To learn music from a kobold was something wild and romantic, something that Mignon would absolutely do. 

"Yes!" she said. "When can we start?"

"Well, this is a bargain," said Lili. 

"Ask for her firstborn," said Grandpapa. 

"I thought we'd agreed that babies aren't useful. Otherwise we could have just stolen her when she was a baby," said Lili. 

"I could leave out food," said Bettina, who vaguely remembered that this was a traditional payment.

"No, the servants take care of that," said Lili. "They're not these new-fangled sort with their scientific ideas, so they do it properly."

Bettina hadn't known that servants could have scientific ideas, and she rather blinked at the thought, particularly when one or two of her former nurses came to mind. But she couldn't get sidetracked from the important thing at hand by wondering about some quite inconsequential set of people, no matter how useful they might be. She was quite miserable at the thought of missing out on secret lessons. She racked her brains.

"Clothes," she said, remembering suddenly that a set of clothes was another traditional payment. But she suddenly thought of the meagre amount she got from her father, just enough for a few ribbons and maybe some silk flowers. "But I don't know if I can afford it," she said, downcast again.

"An excellent idea," said Lili. "And we won't worry too much about the amount now, while you're still getting a paltry allowance. We can adjust as needed."

Bettina didn't hesitate. "Oh, yes," she said, "I'm sure we can work it out."

"I'm sure too," said Lili. She winked at Grandpapa, and, in that moment, Bettina paused, for Lili had looked quite unlike a quaint version of herself. It had become easy to think of them as old, eccentric friends, even in such a short space of time, that she had quite forgotten all the darker stories she knew. Then she blinked and the moment passed, and Lili was smiling at her quite kindly. Kobolds, thought Bettina, were such whimsical little things; surely they wouldn't ask for anything outrageous. They had welcomed her so warmly, after that trifling misunderstanding, and she hadn't really been in any danger.

"That's agreed then," said Bettina, clapping her hands joyfully. "I must go, but thank you very much for the afternoon tea and your generous offer of lessons."

They farewelled her with touching protestations of friendship and regard, and she shuffled down the little passage feeling that she had enjoyed a most pleasurable afternoon, and looking forward to many more. The door clicked shut behind her; she stood and brushed wrinkles from her clothes, and didn't notice the grooves disappear back into smooth, unbroken panelling. 

She found Clemens in the library with a mug of ale at his elbow, for it was long after teatime. He looked up as she burst in, and smiled in welcome, as she twirled and cavorted around the room in acrobatic little leaps.

"And how is my little escapee?" he asked. "What did you do with your freedom today?"

"I wasted it in fripperies," answered Bettina. Then she frowned and paused in her romping. Surely she had done something important today. The thought nagged at her. She had met old friends, perhaps, or learned something, but nothing came to her. Perhaps she had done nothing.

"What is that in your hair?" Clemens asked. Bettina reached up and found a beautifully carved pin, wavy to hold her curls, finely detailed with an old-fashioned dragon. It was clearly not recent work, and she was charmed. She couldn't believe she had forgotten it.

"I found it," she said. "I will keep it always, to remember a time long past, but not forgotten."

>>>>

Bettina sat at the little desk in the music room, paper littered in front of her and her hands buried just enough in her hair not to spoil her artistically tumbled curls while yet giving the impression of profound thought. It was getting late, though not quite time for the tea tray, and the section of folksong she was trying to compose was elusive, but she couldn't bring herself to walk away from it yet.

"The artist at work!" said a voice behind her, and Bettina jumped, for she hadn't heard the door open. For a moment she stared blankly, and then all her memories flooded back.

"Lili!" she said. "You startled me."

It was always a surprise when Lili turned up. Bettina wasn't sure what the magic was, but she could never remember Lili or Grandpapa, or anything they had taught her, whenever they weren't there. She'd pleaded to be allowed to remember, and even once refused to talk to them, but Grandpapa had just said it was the way it was, and if she didn't want lessons it wouldn't be hard to find someone else who did. He even offered to take away her carved hairpin, to make sure they could no longer find her. Bettina definitely did not want that. Since the things she learned seemed to stay with her, she was willing to live with the forgetting of the details.

"Lost in your vision, no doubt," she said, dragging over a footstool and clambering up onto the table to perch next to Bettina's papers. She ran her finger over a scrambled phrase Bettina had tried several different ways and hummed under her breath. Bettina folded her hands in her lap and resisted the urge to snatch the sheaves away. It always infuriated her that Lili was so cavalier with her work, like Bettina's compositions were a commonplace recipe for mutton. She couldn't deny, though, that Lili's insight had added to her understanding, at least a little, and so she overlooked these quaint little ways and waited for her to be done.

"This bit here," said Lili, tapping the paper, "where you change keys-" She broke off to sing the section, and Bettina could hear the fault in the change. Lili sang it again, this time with a different structure leading into the change. Bettina was, as always, lost in the natural feel that this tiny creature had for music, for this was exactly the sound she had wanted and slaved for. "You would have gotten it eventually," said Lili. "Like a little kobold you are sometimes; I always forget."

Bettina picked up her pen and wrote down the new music, with Lili looking over her shoulder. It didn't annoy her now; she had remembered the joy of working together too. Lili was an expression of pure nature, both simple and inscrutable.

Finished, she sat back and sang it quietly to herself. It had exactly the right feeling now, something close to the yearning despair one sometimes got when something was as unobtainable as a mountain, yet as close as the sofa next to you. 

"So you're in love, then," said Lili. She looked again at the music.

"He is unobtainable," sighed Bettina, pressing a hand to her heart in a pose all her friends had found unbearably poignant. 

"Who is it?" asked Lili. "The touchingly earnest young bosom friend of your brother?"

"No," said Bettina, "though he is well enough, and the sort of man one loves without fate. No, I have fallen victim to a terrible rapture, from my mother's own youthful passion, to the novel that he wrote quite into my soul. Now I have met him and he is more than I could ever have imagined! Once a youthful fancy, but now I am transported with love, of a purity that burns me with unquenchable flames!"

"Quite," said Lili. "I do trust he hasn't driven all thoughts of our regular visit to the dressmaker from your head."

Bettina stopped short and removed her hand from her brow. For all Lili's instinctive feel for music, she had a practical streak. Bettina sometimes wondered how she balanced the two, for she herself could not imagine mundane awareness living alongside her vital art. 

"I have no mind to think of clothes," she said, letting some of her irritation show. 

"More's the pity," said Lili. She looked again at the music scattered over the desk, then at the comfortable room with the fire burning merrily, and finally at Bettina. "You seem to let others do that thinking for you, however. How would it be if no one thought of them?"

Bettina shifted a little under her gaze, for sometimes she remembered that Lili wasn't a sweet little playfellow, but an ancient creature with power hidden under her dainty exterior. She looked stern and forbidding, more like a mountain than a sapling. 

"In these times long past," said Lili, "life was less complicated in one way only - if the harvest was bad, death was near. The beauty of music is not separate from the orderliness of daily life, but a result of it, and a celebration of living with nature, not as nature."

Bettina was silent. Of course a kobold, born from wood in a forest long ago and bound to the domestic duties of a house, would see the intertwining of these things. She had neglected the cares of households and economy, and likewise the lives wrapped up in those spheres. 

"Anyway, it's time for clothes," said Lili, and she seemed again kindly and merry as ever. 

"Yes, indeed," said Bettina. "You are quite right. I have an appointment with my dressmaker on Thursday; will that suit? I shall bring the doll model as usual."

"Yes, indeed," said Lili briskly. She scrambled down off the desk and brushed herself off. "Make a fair copy of that music before you forget," she said. "Grandpapa will want to hear it."

Bettina sorted slowly through the papers, keeping just the most recent one. She stood and went to the fire, slowly feeding the oldest, most ruined papers into the flames. 

There was a knock on the door, and she looked up to see the maid there with the tea tray, and behind her the tall figures of Clemens and Achim von Arnim.

"Come in," she said. "Have you come to take tea up here? How cosy!"

They came in and joined her at the intimate little circle by the fire, Clemens standing at the mantle and Achim seating himself next to her on the loveseat.

"Have you been busy?" asked Clemens.

"Oh, I can't answer for what I've been doing this evening; it all seems to have passed in a blur," she said. "But I feel like I've had a breakthrough on something I've been struggling with for a while."

Achim smiled at her and accepted his tea. Bettina realised that she had made it quite without thinking about it, the same way as she knew how Clemens liked his. She smiled back at him, charmed by the earnestness of his face, and the way he waited for her to expand on her ideas. Perhaps she would play the new music for them both tonight, and see what they made of it together.


End file.
